They don’t call Alberta “the Texas of the North” for nothing: Cattle are big business in these parts, and nearly 1.5 million visitors arrived in its biggest city in July 2025 for the Calgary Stampede rodeo. Over the years, Calgary has become known for its world-class steakhouses, but Canada’s third-largest city long ago shed its reputation as a simple meat-and-potatoes kind of town.
Its population is booming and diversifying, bringing in fresh talent that’s shaking up the culinary scene. Throughout its roster of new and revitalized restaurants, cocktail dens, and wine bars, you’ll find a boundary-pushing focus on immigrant flavors, unique fusion creations, and the underrated seasonal bounty of the prairie provinces.
Paul Rogalski, the chef and co-owner at Rouge, chalks up Calgary’s culinary growth to a community that is “inclusive rather than competitive,” which results in “a shared commitment to exchange knowledge, support one another, and strive for excellence.” And Tony Migliarese, who owns a number of restaurants around town such as the Little Noodle Shop and Pizzaface, echoes this belief in “a really tight-knit community” working toward a common goal.
“It’s often the larger cities that get recognized on national or international lists, but the level of hospitality here in Calgary and across Alberta is truly exceptional,” Migliarese says. “We have chefs who were born here, left to work in Michelin-starred restaurants around the world, and have since returned to create something meaningful in their own city.”
Here, a guide to the culinary trends reshaping how Calgarians eat and drink—and some of the best dishes to order around town.
The Vietnamese restaurant Mot To is beloved around town for its inventive “pho grilled cheese.”
Courtesy of Travel Alberta
Fusion dishes celebrate Canada’s multiculturalism
“Calgary is young and diverse,” says Karen Anderson, cookbook author and founder of Alberta Food Tours. “The average age is 33, and we are the third most diverse city in Canada. Over 125 languages are spoken, so people who think that Calgary is just ‘meat and potatoes’ are way behind the times.”
According to the 2021 census, nearly one in three Calgarians are immigrants, and the city’s multiculturalism is finding its way into unique fusion mashups. At the stylish Vietnamese restaurant Mot To, that means “pho grilled cheese,” a French dip–like sandwich of beef, caramelized onions, basil, and cheese, served alongside a shot of pho broth. And at JinBar, chef Jinhee Lee tops pizzas with beef bulgogi or sweet corn and honey butter chips, a favorite crispy snack from her native South Korea.
Alberta’s bounty is more than just beef
“The thing I love about Calgary’s dining scene is the fact that most of the signature foods of our province—beef, bison, canola, honey, Red Fife wheat, root vegetables, Saskatoon berries—all grow within an hour of the city,” Anderson says. “Chefs come here to work with these ingredients and this freshness, and I believe we have a higher rate of independent restaurants because of the quality of our produce.”
One of the best places to explore the province’s bounty is at the River Café, a 34-year-old institution set in a former snack bar in Prince Island Park. Today, the space is surrounded by raised garden beds growing greens, berries, herbs, and flowers, and the culinary team also takes part in a “garden apprentice” program with area suppliers.
Many of the ingredients used at River Café are grown in the gardens right outside.
Courtesy of Tourism Calgary
The menu proudly shouts out growers and planters, and it’s the kind of place where you’re rewarded for asking questions. The sourdough bread, for instance, is made with Red Fife, a beloved heritage wheat variety, and you might see bison bolognese topped with “cold-pressed canola oil.” (The variety of rapeseed oil—which gets its name from a portmanteau of “Canada” and “oil”—is an agricultural staple of the prairie provinces that gets treated with respect here.)
In 2016, the River Café team opened Deane House inside a restored residence built in 1906 for a mounted police superintendent. As at its sister restaurant, a garden outside provides fresh ingredients for the menu, which has clever nods to the culinary history of the province and city. Ginger beef, for instance, is a Calgary-born Chinese Canadian dish invented here in the 1970s, and at Deane House, it’s reimagined as ginger beets, while the hummus is made with lentils, a popular crop in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
But that doesn’t mean Alberta’s beef is stuck in the past
Beyond the city’s many old-school steakhouses, there are plenty of forward-thinking spots to try the province’s prized protein. Located on the 40th floor of a downtown office building, Major Tom is an airier, more modern interpretation of a steakhouse, where aged Alberta Angus beef is brushed with butter, broiled, and then paired with toppings like truffle and madeira jus or a simple slice of blue cheese. But beef shows up on the menu in even more clever ways: Tendons, for instance, are puffed like crackers as a delivery device for caviar, while a tartare is studded with green peppercorns and capers.
Despite Major Tom’s standout beef selection, culinary director Blair Clemis sees steakhouses as just one part of the city’s growing restaurant scene. “I am really excited about the young talent coming up and starting to push a new generation of restaurants into the city’s dining scene,” Clemis says. “It’s always great to see talented colleagues or peers venture out and experience what hospitality means in different cities and countries, but to have a swath of them returning to the city years later and setting up shop is great for Calgary as a whole.”
To sample Alberta beef in a more casual setting, try Class Clown Hamburgers, a ’70s-inspired burger joint and natural wine bar, where the team fresh-grinds chuck and brisket every morning for smashburgers that cheekily borrow inspirations from elsewhere: the Big Mac–like Donald McRonald, the California Classic (which mimics In-N-Out’s “Animal Style”), and Winnipeg Fat Boy, a nod to the chili-topped burgers born in Manitoba’s Greek-owned drive-ins.
Class Clown Hamburgers serves Alberta beef smashburgers alongside natural wine inside a ‘70s-inspired space.
Photo by Tyler-Macsemniuk and Tourism
The cocktail scene is killer
Calgary’s cocktail culture is nearly as diverse and forward-thinking as its restaurant scene. Missy’s This That sits up a flight of stairs above a convenience store and coffee shop, and its casual, winking vibe belies the seriousness of its recipes and encyclopedic spirits list. The menu is dripping with good humor, with drinks like the Orange Yuzu Glad We Used the Fancy Almonds In This??, made with marcona almonds, Glenmorangie 10 Year, yuzu, and orange, or the Djarum Black (Pretty Hardcore Bartender Only Type Drink), which includes green chartreuse, Angostura bitters, and Fernet. Warning: It’s bitter!
Shelter, meanwhile, has a behind-the-bar installation of gas masks and a cocktail menu that includes foraged ingredients and clarified juices. Look for unique flavors like sweet pea amaro, fermented daikon, habanero tincture, and pepita orgeat (a syrup made from pumpkin seeds). And keep an eye on the bar Proof for fun-loving programming like all-night Monday happy hour and a pop-up holiday bar called Miracle.
Bar snacks are getting a glow-up
D.O.P. was a Calgary staple that closed in 2024 when the building that housed it was demolished. But owner Tony Migliarese came back swinging with not one but two sequels: an intimate, rustic Italian spot called Dopo (Italian for “after”) and a drinking den upstairs, Bar Rocca, serving inventive Italian-skewing snacks alongside aperitivos, cocktails, and an exceptional wine selection.
“Calgary is a surprisingly wine-savvy city,” Migliarese says. “Not only do we have some of the best wine shops in western Canada, but we’re also home to some of the most talented sommeliers, wine educators, and service professionals in the country.” Take a seat in the year-round outdoor space—which keeps things cozy with a fireplace, heaters, and plenty of blankets—and order small plates like carbonara deviled eggs with guanciale, gnocco fritto (beef fat cracker) draped with mortadella and snow drifts of grated cheese, and prosciutto and melon served on a bed of ice like a raw bar delicacy.
And beer bars are equally as inventive
Rain Dog Bar describes itself as “a wine bar, for those who prefer craft beer,” and it’s the brainchild of owner Bill Bonar, the province’s first certified cicerone (beer sommelier). Its impressive beer list is heavy on sours and ones brewed in Calgary, and they’re even better when paired with small plates like pork terrine with pineapple and maraschino cherry, clam chowder croquettes, and beet borscht conserva.
Beer lovers should also check out OB Sound Room, a Japanese-style listening bar in the basement of Ol’ Beautiful Brewing Company featuring Indian bites from the buzzy Calcutta Cricket Club. Expect flavorful dishes like British chips with fenugreek-cream curry and a selection of paratha-wrapped kathi rolls, with fillings like tandoori-spiced chicken, lamb keema, or paneer.
Chef Darren MacLean is one of many Calgary chefs who changes his menus with the ebbs and flows of seasonal produce.
Photo by DQ Studios
Culinary treasures are hiding in plain sight
To take the fullest advantage of Calgary’s many culinary pleasures, you’ll need to know where to look: Speakeasy-style spaces are tucked away all over the city. Business & Pleasure, for instance, is entered through an alley behind the Inglewood sandwich shop Super Variety, and its golf-scorecard-themed menu includes bar snacks like tuna crudo aglio e olio and Welsh rarebit.
Paper Lantern is a tropical Vietnamese cocktail bar in a basement in Chinatown, while Heavily Redacted sits below Fine Print, a glitzy restaurant (dress code: “fabulous”) inside the 1893 former headquarters of the Calgary Herald. The latter is an “owners’ lounge” known for its rare spirits and no-photos policy, and while it used to be invitation-only, Heavily Redacted now releases a limited number of reservations each week.
Chef Darren MacLean, a finalist on the Netflix cooking competition series The Final Table, made a name for himself with his flagship izakaya Shokunin, which serves a 15-course yakitori omakase experience. He also runs the sushi and vegetable-forward restaurant Nupo, which hides an eight-seat, Douglas-fir tasting counter called, appropriately, Eight.
Reservations at Eight go live in three-month blocks and tend to sell out within an hour or so, and the 18 courses served here are an ode to Canadian ingredients and Indigenous and immigrant flavors. You might find dishes like chawanmushi (Japanese egg custard) topped with Fogo Island snow crab or British Columbia spot prawns; Québec veal sweetbreads smoked with barley and oolong tea; and moose galbi-jjim (Korean braised short rib stew). It’s one of the hottest tables in town—and arguably Calgary’s worst-kept secret.
